Moving the Goal Posts

In this column,I talk about the nature of process improvement and why it is such a dynamic andchallenging field. The future will be much like the past in many respects, but it will also be very different. However, as we look ahead, there are somereasonably reliable guides that can help us to address the problems we willface.

Brownian Motion

Just aboutevery time I visit an engineering organization, the people tell me, “We’redifferent.” Of course they are. We are all different, but what is surprising ishow often truly different organizations behave in the same way. However, it isalso surprising how often seemingly similar organizations, when faced withnearly identical conditions, behave quite differently. People are both predictableand unpredictable. Much like Brownian motion in physics, there is no way toprecisely predict individual behavior. However, on average, overall behavior ishighly predictable. So, what does this mean for process improvement?Essentially, the following:

• First, thereis no one best way.

• Second, everysituation is different. Each solution must consider the people and theirbackgrounds, beliefs, and circumstances.

• Third, thelessons of the past are the only practical guides we have for the future. Whilewe cannot predict precisely what will work in any specific case, we canestablish highly reliable general guidelines.

• Fourth, theprinciples behind the quality movement are just as sound today as they were in thepast. Those who argue that the new Internet age changes all the old truths willcontinue reliving the same history that many of us have painfully survived.

What theselessons tell us is that a single-minded approach to solving any human problemwill almost certainly be wrong, if not for everybody, at least in many cases.There is no single best answer. People are extraordinarily creative, both inthe ways that they solve problems and in how they create problems. Therefore,we must recognize that problems will change, and we must continually seek newerand better ways to address the problems that we face at each point in time.

When the Problems Change, the Solutions Must Also Change

The other day,I read the following newspaper headline: “The quality of U.S. automobiles lags behindJapan and Europe.” As Yogi Berra once said, this is “déjà vu all over again.”After 20-plus years, can quality still be a problem for Detroit? It almostcertainly is, and the best way to tell is that the General Motors board ofdirectors cut executive bonuses. That is a guaranteed way to get management’sattention.

GM, Ford, andChrysler have been working on quality improvement for more than 20 years, but theystill have about 150 defects per 100 new cars. However, unlike 20 years ago,these are not primarily manufacturing defects. Most are design problems. Detroitsolved the quality problems of 20 years ago, and if the Japanese had not keptmoving the goal posts, Detroit would be in fat city. But the world did change,and Detroit is still dead last in the quality sweepstakes.

The worldchanges, and it does not change all by itself. Everything we do changes it. Inanother lesson from physics, Heisenberg showed that you can know a particle’slocation or its velocity but not both. When you measure one, you change theother. People are just like that. As soon as you fix the process, the problemchanges. Does that mean that we should give up? Not at all; it just means thatwe cannot relax. We must keep thinking, and resist the temptation to blindlyrely on the solutions and formulas of the past. Continue to follow the sameprinciples, certainly, but don’t blindly follow the same path. Sooner or laterit will lead to a dead end.

Finding the Goal Posts

While process problems are often unique, they all stem from human failings, and these arecommon to all of us. Because the same human failings have persisted through theages, we cannot expect to eliminate them. The process improvement challenge isto devise ways to live with and compensate for normal human behavior. We mustrecognize, however, that soon after we compensate for a given set of failings,human nature will find creative countermeasures. So, in spite of all ourefforts, the battle for improvement will continue indefinitely. Hopefully,however, technology will keep improving and each step will move the goal postsa little further down the field.

Human Failings

While softwareprofessionals are marvelously creative and highly energetic, we sometimes feel lazyor want to take a break. We are also a race of procrastinators, and when wecan’t avoid or put off some difficult or unpleasant task, we try to replace itwith an easier task or get someone else to do it. If we find that we still mustdo the job, we tend to do it as quickly and superficially as we can get awaywith. This means that for every complex and difficult task, the processimprovement challenge is to devise ways to get people to consistently do theirwork in a highly professional way.

What makes thisso challenging is that once we figure out some way to do this, it is only amatter of time before people devise a clever way around our fancy new process.Take estimating, for example. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) calls forengineers to be involved in and agree with the project estimate. However, soonafter an organization puts a new planning procedure in place, some group willalmost certainly find an estimating method that uses expert estimators or complexand arcane tools. Experts will then make the estimates and the engineers won’tbe involved.

Even thoughthis destroys the intent of the planning process, unless processes are defined verycarefully, people will adopt new practices that conform to the letter of thedefined process but not to its intent.

What this Means for Process Improvement

What this meansfor you and me is that process improvement must not be directed at only theprocess. The principal objective must be to change human behavior. However, tochange human behavior, we must consider and compensate for normal human failings.

For example, wenow find that even in CMM Level 5 organizations, people have learned tocompensate for their new processes. In some of the Level 5 organizations I havevisited, the measurement and process analysis work is handled by the processand quality groups, and the engineers continue to work essentially as they didat Level 1. This totally misses the point of CMM Levels 4 and 5, which is tohave engineers use data, not just gather and report it. This implies that eventhe goal posts defined by the CMM levels must be moved to keep pace with ourrapidly changing technology.

In the lastanalysis, to improve engineering performance, organizations must change thebehavior of the engineers and their managers. If you find that some change hasstopped producing the desired results, find out why and then devise anotherimprovement to solve the new problems.

The Implications for the Future

We have madegreat strides in the last 10 or more years, and we must continue to build onour successes. However, the goal posts are moving, and the problems we willface in the future will almost certainly be different from those of the past.Think of it this way: You could build a 10-foot boat in your garage, but a1,000-foot ship would require entirely different tools, technologies, andprocesses. Similarly, in transportation, going from 3 to 300 miles per hourrequires several changes in technology. In the software business, we thinknothing of factors of 100. We use the same tools, methods, and processes for aprogram with 10,000 lines of code (LOC) as we do for a 1,000,000-LOCprogramming system.

Our ability tomaster the software-intensive technologies of the future will be largely guidedby the ability of engineering teams to match their behavior to the moredemanding tasks they will face. We cannot expect that our current tools,technologies, and processes will be adequate in the future. The challenges willkeep increasing, and we must continually evolve our methods to keep pace. We mustthink of process improvement in multi-dimensional terms and include theeducational system, as well as industry. An informed customer community willalso be important, and we must consider all levels of the engineeringorganization: executives, managers, teams, and engineers.

Much as in theautomobile industry, we must retain the solutions of the past, but we must broadenour perspective to consider all the relevant aspects of the problem. While itis always risky to predict the future, some trends are now pretty obvious:

• Systems willget larger, more complex, and more integrated.

• Engineeringteams must also become more highly integrated.

• Compatibility,reliability, usability, privacy, and security will be increasingly important.

• Whileschedules must be as short as possible, they must be absolutely reliable.

• The qualityof every engineer’s personal work will be even more important than it has been inthe past.

发表时间：2000年7月

作者：Watts Humphrey

编者按：Watts New - 过程改进的本质

编译：冯信